What Defines "Hand Built"?!

[petemoore]

  So...what is it then ?
   Sweet Dreams are made of these.
    What's better?: the guy who doesn't know what he's sellin' or the guy who doesn't know what he's buyin'...it can be very hard to tell sometimes.
   

[The Tone God]

Just for the record, nowhere did I say that hand made was better. I'm just pointing out that a wave soldered PCB with 100% SMD components and every single component being PCB mounted is not hand made, or hand crafted. The only thing "hand made" about that is soldering the pots to the PCB and maybe the 3PDT switches, too. This is not a QC issue AFAIAC, it's the proper use of terms and accurately representing a product, not lying about it. But apparently the law in this case gives people a license to do whatever the hell they want and call it "hand made". Sorry, but I think that is a real crock of hot stinking horse manure.

On top of that, it's even worse if the manufacturer claims that it was built in the USA and it really wasn't. But that's a whole other issue. So does no one care if a product was basically made in China but it says "Made In The USA" on it? It would bother me a lot, because it's a bold faced lie.

Sorry I wasn't implying you were making that claim. Just a general observation on the topic by others.

Somebody mention that in EU that you have to have the parts made in the EU to claim it as "Made in EU". I know in Canada recently the laws have changed in a similar manner. You cannot claim something is "Made in Canada" unless the product and a certain percentage (90% ?) of the components that make up the product are made in Canada. The U.S. has a different standard. I think it just need to be finally assembled in the U.S. to be labelled "Made in U.S." I forget the standard but I don't think it will change for awhile as it would make it difficult for certain groups to "Buy amerikan!"

I know Paul is just dealing with the claim issue of labelling something "handmade" and U.S. made when its not really in the truest spirit of those claims. I'm just playing The Tone Devil's advocate here with the "Does it matter" point. I prefer to just avoid the issue by not stating the country of manufacture. Saves alot of headaches.

Weather or not something is hand made or machine made is one thing but, just as important an issue also needs addressing and that's some people don't know how to use the tools at their disposal, I have honestly seen people try and drill holes in steel with a 1" wood cutting flat bit. I have also seen people use drill bits that are so blunt that they try and burn there way through a soft aluminium enclosure.

I think the point I am trying to make is that when the term "hand made" is used it is usually for the reason to tell people that whatever it is there selling is of a high quality craft manship (not always case).
Now a correctly set up CNC drill can do a better job at nicer drilled holes than some bloke with a handheld drill and blunt bit. On the other hand a person who knows how to use a hand held drill and correct bits can make a better job than an idiot on a cnc machine.

Paul you posted as I was writing this reply, Yes i also realized that the topic has slightly strayed into quality rather than "hand made or not handmade debate" In terms of hand made , in reality in this day and age i don't think there is a single thing that can be described as 100% hand made. Just as an example if any electronic circuit has a semiconductor in it then a machine made it . Who made the silicon ??

I completely agree that either a machine or a person can do a horrible job. In either case the QA would initially be enforced by the machinist which is sort of where I'm going with the "whats the line where something stops being hand built ?" and "Does it matter ?"

You have a guy with a hand drill. That is hand made. What about if they use a drilling jig, hand made ? Then he decides to use a drill press, still hand made ? What about going to a manual mill, still hand made ? What about going to a mill with a power feed, still hand made ? What about going to a mill with computer controlled power feed (i.e. CNC), still hand made ? Where is the line where it stops being hand made ? I argue that hand made is pointless. Its the QA that matters. In this case the QA is being done by the machinist. Well written gcode and a properly maintained machine will do as well as a person with a hand drill but so can a person with a drill do as well as the machine. Its still the skill of the machinist which is where I would say the "hand made" part is. That human touch.

Same with soldering. I have see lousy solder jobs done by hand and lousy wave soldering work. The QA is not there. There needs to be a human touch be it someone who is an experienced solder or the know how to program the wave solder cycle. The machine is just a tool.

Andrew

[Paul Marossy]

It's all good Tone God. It is kind of a circular "argument", I know. 

[boogietone]

Paul, I, for one, do care. Where to draw the line is not exactly as easy as it sounds, unfortunately. And, it evolves overtime.

This is a great discussion and reminds me of some history and a revolution in gunsmithing begun by Thomas Jefferson and Eli Whitney. It took most of the early 19th century before hand cast, hand fitted, and hand assembled rifle (musket actually) components requiring the skill of a gunsmith were replaced by interchangeable parts that could be produced by "unskilled" labor. Part of the story was the disbelief that the untrained worker (now to include the machine) could produce anything superior to the skilled artisan. At that time, as today, there were, of course, many commercial, ego, and political interests involved, and, not to denigrate the good name of Mr. Whitney, it seems that he played a bit of this game himself. There were/are plenty of both honest men and charlatans then as now - though we may think that there are more of the latter than the former. Tone God's anecdote does, however, lend itself to the maxim of Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity."

For myself, I tend to look askance at certain claims as Paul seems to be doing. The terms "hand made," "organic," "new and improved," etc.,  however, have been so overused as to not connote much. So - caveat emptor or "don't buy a pig in a poke." I would generally consider that "hand made" items would in practice imply one or more of the following: actual hand making of most of the item, use of higher quality components that may or may not mean a better product, greater variation in quality, has some qualities of a "work of art," or some variation on the theme.

Whether this results in a quantitatively better product is, to paraphrase R.G., what the end user gets to decide when they choose what they like better and/or prefer to believe.

As my pappy used to say, "McDonalds is guaranteed mediocrity." One way to interpret this is that we see the BigMac not as a bad burger but that it will be more or less the same in Buffalo as in Wichita, which is a good thing when all you want is a burger and fries but not when you are looking for variety. There is more than one competitor, chains and locals (i.e., boutiques), that touts its particular burger's handcraftedness. What that actually means in fact is anyone's guess, as we see here. Boutique, hand made pedals can be just as crappy as they can be really good and may or may not be truly "Made By Hand" to some significant degree, which I do get as your point.

Cheers.

[DougH]

I agree that the heart of this issue is that "hand made" doesn't really mean anything one way or another anymore, and has become just another generic ad-phrase. I also agree with Andrew that in the end, it doesn't really matter. I'll go further and say, as a consumer it really doesn't matter to me much where or how something is made. What matters is whether it sounds the way I expect, performs reliably and consistently, and lasts a reasonable amount of time before it has to be replaced, at a reasonable price. That's all I really care about.

I wish more builders would try to educate consumers about what they should care about, rather than bullsh!tting them with a bunch of jingoistic nonsense. I think it's common sense and in general consumers do really know what's important about a product. But they get distracted with a lot of ephemera that plays on their insecurities and makes them feel warm & fuzzy but has zero to do with how useful the product really is to begin with. It seems to me that builders who engage in this kind of behavior would much rather have a bunch of stupid and ignorant customers than a bunch of smart ones. For anyone who is in this beyond "fly by night" status, there's something about it that just bugs me.

[Govmnt_Lacky]

It seems to me that builders who engage in this kind of behavior would much rather have a bunch of stupid and ignorant customers than a bunch of smart ones.

Although it has been proven that he never REALLY said it..... PT Barnum was credited with saying:

"There's a sucker born every minute!"

I am sure that PT Barnum would rather have an ignorant customer that had no knowledge of his product and kept PAYING to come back than a smart one that payed ONLY ONCE and never returned.

Basically, I agree with Doug that it is very "decietful" to prey on an ignorant consumer HOWEVER, that is what some businesses cater towards and more often than not.... they are the ones that are the most sucessful 

[Beo]

Someone could educate buyers. Grab guts photos of as many boutique pedals you can find and create an anonymous new webpage / blog to show them all side by side. Rank them by a "hand built" score, noting where SMD, fab boards, or any other mechanizations can be observed. Probably not worth the effort, and the anger or legal jeopardy that could result. Besides, this is really just a mojo score, since being *more* hand-made and tells you nothing about the build quality/reliability of a pedal, or even how good (or innovative) the design is.

[CynicalMan]

Not trying to derail this thread, but it would be nice to have a gut shot gallery somewhere with commentary on the reliability of various pedals. Beavis already has such a gallery at http://www.beavisaudio.com/gg/ but comments on them from pedal builders would probably be useful to non-geeks.

[jmasciswannabe]

Cool link. Thanks!

[Ice-9]

Although I understand the original post about manufacturer "A" claiming there product is hand made, when in fact the individual bits are farmed out to a production line and then hand assembled by someone else. The problem of hand made arises through a production transition when someone starts off in this line of job the product is pretty much hand made because there usually knocked up one by one as people buy the pedals.

Now as Pedal "A "gets a bit of a reputation, word gets round and more people want to buy it. When you only need to build one a week it is uneconomical to go and order a screen printed enclosure and a solder flowed thru hole or SMD PCB, so in the early days "hand made" is a great advertising bonus because it is hand made . Six months or more down the line when the bloke sitting in his workshop at home can't keep up with how many orders he gets, it now becomes a thought that he could get all his PCB's factory made and populated for less cost than he can buy the components for and most likely better quality and saves a massive time in making them himself.

At this point the wording "hand Made" should be removed from the product of course but the maker who has received a nice reputation from his hand made stuff really would like to keep that kudos and this happens as he doesn't want lose that so doesn't remove the advertising blurb, but he wrongly considers this OK as he hand solders some wires onto the pots etc.

There is one maker I am aware of that has introduced his pedals at a cheaper price and they are advertised as the PCB versions as opposed to hand wired/made. You can bet your bottom dollar he hasn't introduced these to lower the price of each unit, I would say there being made like this because they have become popular and he can't make them quick enough in the garage so it has become economically viable to have them  manufactured. To his credit he has advertised them as such and the way he has done it also has added to kudos of his still available hand made pedals. Read the blurb to see what i mean.

On a different note you can debate too much about this hand made thing. For instance if I design my own PCB etch it and drill it, is it home made? I did design, etch and drill it. So YES, I didn't laminate the fibreglass into a 1.6mm flat sheet and add a nice copper layer to it, that was done entirely on a production machine. So NO.

Trading laws of each country aside, there is a line of distinction between hand made, hand build, hand assembled and factory made.

[Govmnt_Lacky]

Hand Built...

Should be HAND ASSEMBLED 

[Jamo]

i even get upset with claimed "hand built" pedals where the PCB fabrication is outsourced... regardless of SMD, through hole, or pre-populated.

there's a local (to me) builder called MI audio, and on the site their slogan is "beyond boutique"... when you look inside an see a nest of cheap wiring and a solder masked board you know they did not build it themselves - so they are right - they are not boutique, they are now beyond it.


little fact: boutique from memory is from french to mean a 'small shop'. IE a cake boutique where the work is specialty and on small scale. hence expensive....





I've just started a new batch of 100+ pedals. i'll do all of the work myself except for the powder coating, I leave that to a professional. i think that's still hand-made by me....








In Australia we actually have a LAW which is similar to the topic...


I can call me pedals "made in australia" because I designed it, built it, and consider it my product. HOWEVER I can not legally call it "australian made".... I didn't make those capacitors and resistors, and they were not made in this country. therefore my pedal isn't legally "australian made".

Even Devi is getting some fabrication done now, and if you don't call her gear boutique what is? 

Business gets bigger = need to find more efficient method of building.


And Darron(Dazatronix guy), pretty poor effort sh*t canning a fellow Aussie builder.....   

[runmikeyrun]

I was told at some time that the term "hand selected" as used in descriptions like "hand selected 12ax7 tube" means only that someone physically picked the tube up and put it in the socket... not what images the mind conjures up of someone carefully testing dozens of tubes to find the right one for each unit.  But thats what marketing is all about, to make you feel good about wanting to buy a product.

[darron]

hey there Jamo. i see it's your fist post so welcome to the forum. good to open up an old can of worms.



well, as went over, boutique has implications that something is done as specialty "small" work - of course often at enormous prices because it is specialised and there is no setup to make suck things cheaply.

when a company finds themselves in a position to be able to expand it's a great thing. it means people are liking the product/service they offer. at a point they can decide to save a buck and outsource their labour. buyers of a 'boutique' pedal usually like to buy the actual 'labour' with the pedal, knowing that the attention was given by the person who should be caring about it the most, the end developer. some business-people would enjoy reselling labour. some electronics nuts get off on the labour itself. either way will sound the same and probably be as reliable.

if you want to fabricate boards and have slap on hookups that can save the most pain-in-the-arse task. use alright hardware and you've maximised profit. you can start getting something out in numbers easier, and get costs down to the end buyer and the middle-man.

if something looks like it was just 'assembled' then it probably was.

And Darron(Dazatronix guy), pretty poor effort sh*t canning a fellow Aussie builder.....  

it's late, but i'll try to make a coherent ramble.


who said anything about shhhhh  l t  canning anybody? some of their gear has some great reputation.

"beyond boutique" is ironic in context of our discussion. it follows to show the transition moving from boutique at one point to something that is no longer. people don't initially make things by hand because it's best, they do it by hand because it's the easiest way in the beginning.

poor effort

since you bring it up now, it certainly tickles me the wrong way. they need to rethink their marketing. it's not honest. all things are subjective i suppose though, except that which is true by definition alone (IE Pi)

actually, the man just isn't honest himself. last i met him, he laughed off the fact that he had to let his aussie staff go at a stage where he was a little too ambitions. i have first hand experience as an ex-employee (elsewhere) that an honest employer doesn't laugh such things off when these things happen. i digress. the best thing to take away is that ambiton is something i admire highly and that laughter can be a good medicine.

fellow Aussie

re: 'aussie'. i don't like supporting people just because they are like you, or having less favour because they are not. that's how things like racism and religious outcasting works. the net and the people using it make our world a little wider than that. because of Aron there is a great collaboration of minds helping each other, and very kindly. you could design something (maybe with help too?), share it, and then have someone across the world building it the next morning and giving you feedback on it.

you'll know of the people around here that are really doing things amazing. and some not as much. they come from all parts of the globe but i bet a lot of their 'newer' ideas were strongly assisted by tiny snips of research presented right here, and over there.


back onto subjectivism. when you speak to the older guys in electronics, who were there for the birth of the semiconductor for example, you can find they have a certain mind-set. you get their vibe where in electronics if something isn't done the best way then it was done incorrectly. "expand?"

Aussie builder

well. that's it, they are an Aussie 'builder'. outside of what goes on around here. i'm not in the same league with 'builders' so it's far from fellow. i have a hobby business because i i enjoy it. i'm not trying to find every way i can to make a buck like a business would.


arg! 12:33am



it's a controversial thread. might need expanding with some new brain juice, or let it die again.



sorry if i said anything too touchy or out of line. tell me if i am out of line.

[michael_ibrahim]

Have we actually met Darron?

[darron]

Have we actually met Darron?

melbourne amplest before last. everyone was setup a bit more elaborately that year.

jumping over to the other forum now :S

[michael_ibrahim]

Really? I don't recall. And what was the time before that? You mentioned 'last time'.

I'm just trying to clarify your potentially defamatory public claim,... you're saying that the first time we met, I pull you aside and said something like,... "i'm so big i'll fire my staff,... mu ha hahahahaha"

Just trying to clarify.

[darron]

last, and first. it's easy to remember that amp fest, Achilles brought a hot lady friend in one of his tshirts (:

clarify your potentially defamatory public claim

yes, i understand that. you didn't have a pitchfork and follow with "muhahah" maybe laughter is your way of dealing with something bad? if that's the case then someone should never 'come down' on someone for that.

i'll say this elsewhere too: someone just emailed me and suggested the hit is that maybe people shouldn't name the actual names. i must have been particularly annoyed that night for reasons exactly in this thread. so i'm a bit sorry about that, though if you need to defend something then it will be very good discussion for this thread actually. i'm keenly interested and know of others who are. i know you'll step up and say what good things need to be said. if it's anything nasty then PM or email me so that the moderators don't step in and get angry.

[Govmnt_Lacky]

Wow...

I never knew how cut-throat, gossip-laden, and down right nasty it can get building little electronic boxes full of resistors, capacitors, and semiconductors 

Relax guys, there are MUCH MORE serious matters in the world!

Make LOVE, not WAR 

[darron]

Wow...

I never knew how cut-throat, gossip-laden, and down right nasty it can get building little electronic boxes full of resistors, capacitors, and semiconductors  

Relax guys, there are MUCH MORE serious matters in the world!

Make LOVE, not WAR  

well that's right. sometimes its easy to be offended though and that needs consideration

someone once said to me "it's just hooking wires and bits up, isn't it?"

"... well... yeah"





michael, you could contribute greatly in this thread about what constitutes a real boutique pedal with your experience with "joyo pedals" ? i'm sure there's lots to be said actually...